Superstitious? (8)

‘Like the fire... the maize could convey messages to the housekeeper. If a tortilla became folded over on the griddle, the woman expected the arrival of a guest or the return of her husband; this approaching person was said to have kicked the tortilla.
’Certain ritual precautions had to be taken when consuming food. If girls did not sit down to eat, their mothers worried that they would marry far from home - as if the mystical link to their central place, the floor by the fire, would be broken. Cooking is, again, linked to warfare: the cook had to keep her menfolk from dipping food directly into the cooking pot, or they would lose their (future) war captives... And she must not eat tamales that stick to the cooking pot, lest a foetus adhere to her womb and she die in childbirth...’

Drawing by Alberto Beltrán of an Aztec woman preparing maize dough to make tortillas